Life Without Traffic Signs 604
zuikaku writes, "Der Spiegel has an article titled European Cities Do Away with Traffic Signs reporting that seven cities and regions in Europe are doing away with traffic signs, signals, painted lines, and even sidewalks. With the motto 'Unsafe is Safe,' the idea is that, when faced with an uncertain, unregulated situation, drivers will be naturally cautious and courteous. Then again, they may end up with streets jammed with pedestrians, bicyclists, and cars like some places in India and China." I can't see this idea getting traction in the U.S.
Traffic Can Self-Regulate (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Even with signs, some cities are like that... (Score:2, Informative)
Italy has 97 road deaths per million people, the UK has 56, Germany 71, Sweeden 53.
I spent a couple of years in Naples and saw a fair number of road accidents, although was always surprised there wasn't more given the standard of driving, quality of the roads and some of the vehicles on them. Somebody I knew, knew a doctor working in an emergency room and said they saw a lot of kids with head trauma because they'd not been wearing seatbelts.
I can understand the basis for this experiment, it kind of links back to basic chaos theory and the idea that order will emerge from chaos. However that order may well involve killing a few people, making roads impossible to cross, causing more accidents etc along the way but the result may be better flowing traffic and more relaxed drivers.
Works in what sense? (Score:5, Informative)
Not so much. It's done that way sure, and India has a stupidly high rate of traffic fatalities.
The assertion of the proponents of this, that less traffic rules means more safety, is not supported by the evidence.
Woonerven (Score:5, Informative)
In heavily-trafficked areas where cars will always move slowly and multiple modes of transportation come together (bicyclists, pedestrians, mass transit, scooters, cars, etc.), it seems that it works better if they self-regulate. Woonerven came into being in The Netherlands in the '60s and '70s, and the idea is to have a common space shared by all of these types of transit. Obstacles are placed in the street (planters, trees, parking spaces, etc.) to prevent traffic from moving quickly. This also turns pedestrians into the primary users of the space, making vehicles the intruders. Cars seldom exceed 10mph in woonerven.
Holland and Denmark have converted 6,500 brief stretches of road into woonerven. Traffic fatality rates have dropped to nothing. Intersections were a few annual fatalities were routine haven't seen a single death. That's a) because automobile drivers cannot drive through quickly because they're so varying and b) because 20mph is the cap of speed at which pedestrians can avoid serious injury when being struck by a car.
Happily, 18.5mph is the speed at which urban traffic flows best, many studies have shown. Coincidentally, this is also a speed at which there's no need for traffic control systems.
We have woonerf-like traffic patterns (and self-regulating patterns, as in the article) throughout the world now. Look at rush hour on Paris' Avenue de la Grande Armee: it's got four lanes of traffic at noon on a Sunday, but come rush hour people up and decide that maybe six is better. Look at Beijing during rush hour -- hordes of bicyclists mingling with packed autos, scooters weaving through the chaos.
England's got them, too. They call them "home zones." They're in a few dozen places now. They can't be more than a third of a mile long, and can't be used by more than 100 vehicles per hour. More traffic means that it's just not a viable home zone.
For more on this see Linda Baker's 2004 article for Salon [salon.com], Anthony Flint's 2004 Boston Globe article [boston.com], and walkinginfo.org's page about woonerven [walkinginfo.org].
Re:Cyclists (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. [labreform.org]
Sidewalks have poor safety records for bicyclists. The problem is the intersections--drivers crossing crosswalks or sidewalks (such as at driveways) check for pedestrians, but not cyclists, who (due to higher speed) are generally a lot farther away from the potential collision point at the time the driver checks.
Sharing the road between people going different speeds is a problem with or without cyclists--especially in a dense urban environment with lots of people turning, parking, etc.--and cyclists can sometimes be easier to pass than other cars thanks to being narrower and easier to see around.
Which isn't to say that there can't be slowdowns--the typical example I notice is the narrow winding country roads without a lot of space or good visibility for passing.
And on-street bike lanes can have a place for keeping traffic of different speeds flowing. But note people have a false expectation that they'll totally segregate car and bike traffic; that's not really a good idea: (assuming US drive-on-the-right conventions in the following)
In general there's this expectation that total segregation of cars and bicycles is going to make cyclists safer--but the big accident risk is at intersections, and cars and bicycles have to interact there anyway.... So getting people to take predictable, conflict-minimizing paths through intersections is more important than segregating the different types of traffic.
Re:Works in what sense? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually it is.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.
and yes, it is coming to the US.
Re:Unsafe is safe, war is peace... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Unsafe is safe, war is peace... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Unsafe is safe, war is peace... (Score:5, Informative)
Please note that I said roundabout, not "traffic circle." A modern roundabout is a subtly different beast than a traffic circle of old.
If you're interested in roundabouts, a good reference is here [tfhrc.gov].
p.s. I'm not a highway geek, I'm a traffic engineer.
Re:Unsafe is safe, war is peace... (Score:4, Informative)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-41579604
Re:Denmark! (Score:3, Informative)
PLEASE mark these as not safe for work. Video contains ladybumps.
Re:Unsafe is safe, war is peace... (Score:3, Informative)
It's rather complex to explain, but there is a simple test to tell if you are an "X Geek" or simply somebody who does "X" for a living. If you are placed in a social situation with somebody who doesn't do "X", do you end up talking about the exact same kinds of things that you do when you get together with people who do "X"? If you do, you are either a geek or an extreme anti-geek.